Operation: Brighten HQ
by El Burrito
Summary: In an attempt to occupy the Turks between missions, Tseng approaches Rude, Reno and Elena with their strangest orders yet. In-game.


"Orders are in." Tseng strode into the Turk staff room, back perfectly straight, emanating obedience and diligence. Rude, Elena and Reno were sprawled around, almost comatose with boredom. Two pairs of heavy, military-issue boots were resting on the magazine-strewn coffee table, and a slightly smaller pair were whisked off the kitchen counter as he entered. Tseng held a single, slightly crumpled sheet of paper up for them to see.

"Rufus said he had nothing for us to do," Elena frowned, sitting up slowly.

"Well he found something." Found wasn't the word. It had taken Tseng six hours of persistent badgering to wheedle a task out of Rufus. The President was busy trying to track Cloud and co down and chasing Sephiroth, and had no time for the Turks, so neither he nor Heidegger had assigned them anything to do for three days. They were getting bored, which led to arguments, which led to brawls, which eventually led to a useless team of elites in the infirmary or sent home.

"Have they found Cloud? Can we leave now?" Reno had been asking him the same thing every time he entered the room these past few days, demonstrating a work ethic most would have never guessed he possessed. In reality, a mixture of intense boredom and a love of being paid for beating the crap out of people, as well as a vengeance after Cloud had mauled him filled Reno with a reckless, dangerous energy Tseng had learned to distract with other duties. Every second Reno had been cramped up here, waiting for the order to fetch Cloud, Tseng had been expecting to receive word of Elena or Rude's deaths.

"No."

"Can I go home until they do?" It was practically a script, this same conversation had been had so many times.

"No. We have to be ready at all times."

"So what's the mission?" Elena asked. "Will we need to leave the building?"

"No. It will be completed from here." Tseng lifted the paper, and read, "Operation: Brighten HQ. Operatives: Reno, Rude and the girl Turk, supervised by Tseng. Background: Complaints have been received that the Shinra building is not a positive working environment. To combat this, you will be making posters depicting Shinra's victories over its foes. Research one victory each, and present your poster when it is complete. Be prepared to leave on alternative missions at any time, and leave Rufus and his men the hell alone." Tseng glanced up at his team.

Rude, as always, was unreadable. His face was blank beneath the sunglasses he swore he needed for the fluorescent lighting in the building. In every building. Elena was frowning. Reno's mouth was open in disgust, forgotten cigarette smouldering the coffee table where it had fallen.

"Mission? That's busy work!" he exclaimed.

"We're Shinra's elite! We're well above school projects!" Elena cried.

"But not above shirking orders? This is directly from Rufus, you know."

"Yeah, I know. But, sir, it's written on a napkin!" This was the closest Elena had ever been to disobedience.

"Napkin or not, it's an order. Get your things together. We're going to the library."

Rufus had given them a task that involved the library mainly because no one else needed it, and any task that didn't involve the Turks killing someone usually led to them shouting, throwing things and… killing someone.

Tseng led the way to the elevator. Behind him, Reno punched Elena in the arm, and she retaliated by pushing him into a plastic plant. And they wondered why they were given primary school level duties.

Tseng had to hold the elevator open for five minutes, Rude standing patiently beside him, as Reno swore at the cigarette machine. Elena was on his other side, glaring sulkily at the red-head. She finally lost her temper and screamed at him. As if waiting for his chance – which in all likelihood was what he'd been doing – Reno screamed back and within seconds the two were wrestling. Rude and Tseng pried them apart.

"Stop it!" he barked, "Get in the elevator. You can start thinking about which victory to depict."

"What about Shinra's victory over AVALANCHE in knocking the pillar down?" Reno smirked, striding into the lift.

"Yeah!" Elena agreed, "You can show Cloud beating the crap out of you and escaping!"

"Fuck you," Reno spat, and shoved her into the wall. Tseng stepped quickly between them.

"Rude," he changed the subject tactfully, "Which victory do you think you'll be doing?"

Rude was silent. "I don't know," he said eventually, "But for the record I am as outraged as my partners about this."

Tseng glanced from him, standing still and looking perfectly content, to Elena who was curled up in the corner, scowling, and Reno who was glaring at the ground.

"Well, ok." He tapped his foot uncomfortably, willing the elevator to move faster. Someone was going to get hurt if he didn't get them working very soon. If they weren't so desperately needed to be on call at all times, he would have scheduled them a chance to hunt a 'serial killer' or 'pervert' from the slums, giving a vague description and not caring how many people they killed.

To be honest, he wished as much as the others did to be at home right now, asleep. Keeping them up all hours was unreasonable, if not unusual. It wasn't the first time they'd had to pull all-nighters that ended up lasting up to weeks. At least Shinra provided all the stay-alert pills they could wish for. Unfortunately these just made them more irritable.

The elevator ground to a halt and the doors opened, allowing a slim young brunette on.

"Evening Roseline," Tseng smiled, moving aside for her and shoving Reno into the wall.

"Hello, Tseng. How are you?" she asked, smiling back and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Not bad. Yourself?"

"I'm okay. A bit overworked, but aren't we all? I've had to sort through so many reports I'll swear I'm all but cross-eyed." Roseline laughed. "But oh, I shouldn't complain. I'm sure your work is a hundred times more taxing than mine."

Tseng smiled, a little uneasily.

"Am I allowed to ask what you guys are up to? Or is it top secret?"

"Well, it's a matter of-"

"We're decorating posters," Reno told her flatly.

"To stick on the walls," Elena chimed in.

"Oh." Roseline's smile faltered. "That sounds…"

"Juvenile?" Elena snarled helpfully.

"Well-"

"Don't forget that we could still kill you in a second," Reno scowled.

"Yes, yes, I… I know. Excuse me." Roseline smiled briefly to Tseng, and stepped off the elevator."

"Tseng has herpes!" Reno shouted at her retreating back. Her look of confusion was cut off by the closing doors.

_Don't hit him don't hit him don't hit him, _Tseng counselled himself firmly. _Don't hit him don't hit him. _Suppressing his anger, Tseng stared blankly at the doors. Reno, having failed to bait Tseng, kicked Elena. She also failed to respond, so he screamed.

"I hate you all! Why's it taking them so long to find Cloud?"

"You let him escape."

"So did you!"

"I didn't have a PLATE to drop on him!"

"Stop it," Tseng ordered, as they finally reached the right floor. He waited for the three of them to file out before he followed.

It was almost two in the morning, so the library was completely deserted. Then again, the library was almost always completely deserted, except for the occasional secretary sent to retrieve information. Evidently at some point, someone who liked books had been involved in the development of the Shinra headquarters building. The library was possibly the warmest place here, not just because of the central heating, but because of the welcoming lights, lacking all of the sterility of the watery fluorescent lighting of the rest of the place, and the wood panelling, a far cry from the stainless steel the entire building seemed to be constructed with.

Tseng liked to come here to think, to grab a file and sit in the corner where he knew he wouldn't be disturbed. Unfortunately, having brought his subordinates, tonight was going to be anything but restful.

"What the fuck is this place?" Reno asked, looking around in confusion.

"It's the library, Reno." Elena moved to one of the shelves, running her eyes over the spines.

"How long has it been here?"

"Reno I've sent you here numerous times to research reports. Remember when you told me Kalm was powered by Griffon tears? You swore you'd found the information here."

"Yeah, and I uh, did. I just… forgot."

"Mm hmm. Pick a topic and get researching. I'll be over here." Tseng sunk into a chair, relishing the few moments of silence as Reno stared around the room and Elena studied files. In no time they would be shouting and throwing things, and Tseng would be ready to kill them. But for now, he relaxed.

Rude was the first to pick a file, scanning it quickly before moving to sit beside Tseng.

"What have you got?" Reno asked immediately.

"History of Shinra's activities in Junon," Rude replied.

"Aw, no fair! I wanted Junon!" he was beside them in a second. "C'mon man, don't be gay. Give me Junon." Rude didn't acknowledge his partner's presence. "Ruuuuude. C'mon. C'mon man. Don't be like that. Just let me have it. There are plenty of other places. C'mon."

"Reno," Tseng spoke up, "Do you even know where Junon is?"

"Yes! It's where the Junon bomber came from," he told him smugly.

"The Junon bomber?" Tseng couldn't recall any terrorist with that moniker, but he avoided the kind of media that gave nicknames to its unknown terrorists.

"Yeah. Two thirds gin, one third tequila, plus grape juice-"

"Reno, find a file."

--

An hour later, Rude was studiously taking notes from his file, while Elena chattered incessantly at Tseng. Reno was behind the shelves, doing Leviathan knew what.

"Because the Wutai-Midgar war is just an amazing wealth of information but I'm afraid it will be too broad to illustrate in any meaningful way-"

"I'm sure it will be _fine, _Elena."

"Well I suppose if I choose just one facet to go into depth with, it will work. Thanks boss!" she grinned cheerfully at him. Tseng smiled weakly back. He didn't know how the girl had managed to stay alive long enough to get to Turks. She seemed to have an amazing ability to say the very worst possible thing. Bragging about Shinra's victory over Wutai to her clearly Wutaian boss, on whom she was still desperate to make a good impression, was something anyone else could identify as a Very Bad Idea.

"Alright, so now we're just waiting on you to find a file Reno, and we can go."

"Oh, well, I've found one, boss!" Reno burst out from behind the shelf. "Let's go let's go let's go!"

"Where's your file?"

"Right here." Reno reached for the nearest shelf as he passed and pulled out a folder without sparing its cover even a glance. "Back to base?"

Tseng sighed, and followed his team back to the elevator. When it arrived at their floor they found themselves face-to-face with Rufus Shinra himself. Tseng and Rufus immediately fell back into discussing the current situation. Evidently one of Shinra's nformants had infiltrated the group because they had discovered Cloud was travelling by buggy to an as-yet-unknown location.

"The communication system is unreliable but the second we have a position I'm sending your team in," he informed Tseng.

"We're more than prepared for it," he affirmed.

He was uncomfortably aware that behind him Reno and Elena were bickering again, this time over the Wutaian war, and some discrepancy Elena had found between an anecdote of Reno's and, well, fact. Tseng himself had been party to several of Reno's "when I was in Wutai" stories, detailing the heroic part he played in almost single-handedly winning the war, despite the fact that Tseng had had him based in Midgar nearly the entire time. Then again, Tseng had also heard a few of his "when I ended the Cosmo Canyon siege" tales, despite _its_ conclusion over ten years before he was born.

They stepped off before Rufus and, thankfully, before Elena and Reno's fight got physical. Elena put a pot of coffee on and they all sat around their low coffee table.

"Uh, chief?" Reno turned to Tseng, "What are we supposed to make these posters with?"

Tseng hadn't though of that. "I'll go search the supply room for materials. You three stay here and read through your files, maybe sketch a plan."

He hurried down three flights of stairs, requiring speed the elevator couldn't offer. The supply room was unsurprisingly short on art supplies, however had they needed to make posters from guns and hand grenades they would have had no problem. Tseng eventually settled for packets of red, blue and black biros, some capsules of chaff, a bottle of black ink and a few different shades of coloured paper. He also picked up three large pieces of cardboard and a bottle of glue, and passed back through the kitchen to collect uncooked macaroni.

He finally returned to their staff room, dreading the cacophony he would find, only to encounter all three of his agents sitting quietly and reading. Reno was squinting at his file through a black eye, but silence was silence and Tseng just dumped his materials on the coffee table. His team stared back at them, underwhelmed.

"Chaff?" Reno questioned him.

"Like glitter, if we cut it up," Elena smiled, and turned to Tseng, "Right?"

Tseng nodded. "You may start your poster whenever you wish." He was actually not looking forward to them finishing this task, because as much as they whinged about the job it was a job, and without it they would be even more unbearable.

He set to cutting the chaff into smaller pieces while they finished reading their files. Elena sketched absently on a piece of paper while Rude continued to take notes. Reno just stared at his own file. "Where in the name of Ifrit's fiery assholeis Mideel?" he asked.

"On an island to the south-east. Has Shinra had any significant victory over Mideel?" Tseng asked, struggling to recall them ever being in the news.

"Well. We lobbied to raise their Mako taxes by 14 gil seven years ago."

"Well, that's something I suppose. The money could be put into Shinra warfare and in the very least remind them of the control we have over their lives."

"Yeah. It failed though. Their taxes didn't change."

"Hm. Well I'm sure we've had some influence. Keep looking." Tseng was concentrating on trying to cut each piece of chaff into a perfect right-angled triangle.

"Well. This entire file actually just tracks the defeated tax-raising bill," Reno admitted.

Tseng looked up at him.

"I could return to the library! Find something else, it'll only take me maybe, two, three hours tops-"

"I'm sure it will be fine. It will prove your mental dexterity; to find a case seemingly unrelated to Shinra's greatness and determine how it demonstrates our prestige."

"Yeah. Right." Reno flipped through a few pages, his eyes glazing over. Elena looked dismayed that she couldn't show her own mental dexterity with the most blatant display of Shinra's powers from essentially its beginning.

In an attempt to demonstrate her mastery of the task she turned to her boss and announced, "I think I'm ready to start making my poster now!"

Tseng waved silently to the materials, and she began. After she'd bent over the poster for a good fifteen minutes, gluing down macaroni with the concentration one would give to sharpshooting, Rude took up his own poster and carefully selected a biro from the pile, testing a few on a scrap of paper before he pressed one to the cardboard. Tseng glanced at Reno, who was staring in bewilderment at his own file.

"Tseng," he asked slowly, "What's a makeshift redemption proposal? A third-level makeshift redemption proposal," he corrected himself.

"I'm afraid I'm not well acquainted with tax law," Tseng confessed. "Perhaps there's a little more obvious angle you could attack this from?"

Reno nodded uncertainly and turned back to the front of his folder. Rude painstakingly eased a few pieces of sparkling chaff across his cardboard.

--

When Heidegger strolled in half an hour later, clipboard in hand and arrogant smile firmly in place, Tseng was scowling at the newspaper while his elite team knelt around the table. The beefy, bald one had glitter up to his elbows, and the annoying girl one was gently blowing on a sheet of cardboard. Reno was frowning in concentration, the tip of his tongue poking out the side of his mouth as he squirted tomato sauce over his own piece.

All four jumped to their feet as he entered.

"What's this?" he asked Tseng. He preferred for the Turks to be brawling or arguing when he came in, not placidly doing arts and crafts.

"Orders from Rufus. Recreate Shinra's victories," Tseng told him, sounding bored. "Do you have orders?"

Heidegger ignored him, moving around the table to look over Rude's shoulder at the table.

"Junon," he guessed, taking in the metallic gleam of the buildings, the glistening turquoise ocean and the tiny brown blur of the previous town, right down the bottom out of sight. "Marvellous," he smiled, despite himself.

"I portrayed our victory over Wutai!" Elena volunteered eagerly, presenting her poster to the head of public safety.

Heidegger bent over it for a moment, then sniffed. "Very nice," he told her patronisingly. "I suppose the macaroni are soldiers?"

"Yes, sir! I colour coded them-"

"As the different ranks of SOLDIER. Very clever. Except that we would never have second classes leading any sort of major operation, ever. I suggest you use your next free time to study successful military proceedings."

Leaving Elena openmouthed, he hesitated a second before, out of curiosity, venturing, "Reno? I suppose you chose a bloody, historic battle?"

"Tax law, actually," Tseng snorted.

"Oh no, I gave up on that," Reno replied easily, "I didn't get half the words."

"You-" Reno had been quiet for far too long while working, Tseng now realised. His sister had a toddler, and had told him that long periods of silence were never a good sign. The same was true for Reno. Heidegger was already pushing past his red-head, leaning over the table.

"What the…" he murmured. "What victory is this?"

Tseng could see from where he stood that half the sauce was gone from the bottle. Reno still held an uncapped permanent marker. Tseng steadied himself.

"Oh, it's those shock collars we tested on the prisoners last year," Reno grinned.

"They- they were failures. They caused the wearer's head to explode after six days of use," Heidegger frowned. Tseng, who had thought himself immune to the horrors of war, still felt sickened by the memory. Heidegger hadn't removed his eyes from the page, seemingly transfixed by it. "I wouldn't call that a victory."

"Well sir," Reno said, dropping the pen and wiping his hands on his pants, "You're not me. Orders?"

Heidegger blinked, and dragged his gaze from Reno's art. "Y-yes, yes. Orders. Gongaga!" he announced, "Stat."

The three of them immediately leapt into action, and hurried about arming themselves. More. Heidegger turned to Tseng. "You're to go too. Scarlet has a project she wishes for your assistance with at the reactor."

Tseng nodded. "Very well." A slight smile tugged at his mouth. "I trust that you'll take care of their projects?"

Heidegger's eyes were again drawn to Rude's masterpiece and Reno's monstrosity. "Yes, I'll find something to do with them," he replied, more uneasy than Tseng had seen him in all his years with Shinra.

Tseng nodded once again, reached for his coat and led his team to the choppers, leaving Heidegger with the remnants of the last few hours of insanity.

--

Cloud hurried through the foyer of Shinra HQ, Red XIII and Tifa covering him. The building was eerily empty; he supposed everyone had evacuated what with all this weirdness with the cannon.

"Is it really worth us getting killed, just so you can find a poster for some pub and get free drinks for a week or whatever the prize is?" Tifa snapped. She was getting nervous, she clearly hated being back here, particularly knowing that Hojo was leaping around somewhere and pumping Sephiroth with Mako.

"Jeez, keep that attitude up and I won't let you put anything on my tab," Cloud teased her, "Here! Yuffie said it was at the top of the stairs and- huh?" He froze before the board.

"Cloud?" Red XIII called, trotting over to him, "Are you o- hmm."

"Look," Tifa growled, "I'm serious here Cloud, we what the hell is that?"

The Turtle's Paradise poster was gone, apparently, along with the Shinra's slogans. In its place were three crude drawings, or one crude drawing-with-macaroni, one masterfully drawn watercolour with gritty glitter, and one splattering of harsh black lines and blood.

"This is ridiculous," Red muttered, "How can Shinra justify getting _children _to produce their propaganda?"

"Mentally handicapped children, at that," Tifa frowned. "Can we head to the cannon now?"

"Sure, sure," Cloud replied distractedly, "You know – this is kind of accurate. Except that second classes would never lead a major operation."

"That's great," Tifa said, "Now let's go beat Hojo. I bet the Turks never stopped their operations to look at finger-paintings."


End file.
